About being a punk

17.11.04


It all started many many years ago when I first saw real Punks walking around Leicester Square in London. I was in a red bus looking at the street from the window, when I suddenly caught a colourful picture. A bunch of freaks were standing at the end of the street, breathing in fumes. If someone asked me to describe them, I would say that they look like colourful birds. They didn’t look at all like the people I knew until then. They were different. They were impressive. They were mysterious, aloof and silent; they were even scary. They had dyed their long hair –their ‘standing’ hair- that covered their heads in many colours and looked like colourful crowns. They had studs on their necks and on their wrists too. Tons of trinkets were hanging from their ears and their faces were dyed with colourful powders. They were standing there in the middle of nowhere, looking indifferent, as if their own life was just a word in brackets, comparing it to the lives of the others. The truth is that I was scared of them but I admired them as well. I told my mother: ‘When I grow up, I want to be like them’.

Years passed and I grew up. Countless are the times that I came back to London (I still go whenever I can) and I was sad to have figured out that the freaks had disappeared. True Punks don’t exist any more (according to Papazoglou- Manolis Rassoulis, the train must have run over them) The world is full of imitating people, of people who pretend to be anti-conventional, of people who try to look different. They pierce their tongues and ears, they dye their hair; and all this in a desperate effort to cry out loud and thus declare their presence without suspecting that they end up looking so much with one another, precisely because they end up using the same methods and techniques in order to stand out. I see them all dancing at the rhythm of noises, amidst smokes and under colourful lights. I’m there with them too. They are so passionate that they can’t see anything beyond the end of their noses. They fall on my wheelchair and apologize because they didn’t see me. I am invisible and yet so visible at the same time. I am different without even having planned to be. From one point of view, I am lucky. Maybe I should pierce my ear for a second time? Not to stand out but to look like them?